Entertainment

Top women riders head to surfing's Everest for WickrX Super Sessions

Located about 20 miles south of San Francisco and featuring sharks, churning waters and massive waves, Mavericks is to many surfers what Mount Everest is to mountaineers. It's the biggest. It's the baddest. It's a destination people travel halfway around the world to try to conquer.

Now, this fall, 14 of the top women in big-wave surfing will descend upon Mavericks to conclude a first-of-its-kind competition called the WickrX Super Sessions that features a heavy online component to help promote the sport.

The idea is simple, but unique: Take the top women in big-wave surfing, who are grossly overshadowed by their male counterparts, and have them use the Internet to share rides, bailouts and behind-the-scenes footage from their own respective home beaches around the world. Then, when the conditions are just right, likely in late November or early December, send out the call and have them all unite at Mavericks for one final competition.

At Mavericks, a purse of $55,000 will be dispersed for the day's top riders — as well as those who shared the most compelling content online in the lead-up to the grand finale. The goal is to give female big-wave surfers — who almost exclusively have to hold down full-time jobs to support their world-class wave riding — a new professional outlet, as well as added exposure.

Allison Arvizu is among more than a dozen top women's surfers signed on for the WickrX Super Sessions.

Image: AllisonArvizu

The content the surfers produce themselves will live on the WickrX Super Sessions site in addition to Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Vine and Snapchat (username: WickrX) accounts. Surfers will share footage from the water, as well as technical advice about equipment and looks at their day-to-day lives.

Live-streamed roundtable discussions featuring some of the surfers, and the finale at Mavericks will be live-streamed as well. Fans who use the hashtag #WickrXSuperSessions online will be entered into a drawing to watch the Mavericks component from a boat near the massive waves.

The cause of promoting women's big-wave surfing is near and dear to the heart of Nico Sell, who founded the event and the Wickr messaging app. She was among the first pro female snowboarders before finding success in the tech world. The Super Sessions event is the debut of WickrX, which will stage and promote other events celebrating unusual, extreme and impressive human achievements.

"In a way, we're trying to emulate what Red Bull and GoPro have done," Sell told Mashable in an interview. "Up until now there wasn't really one place you could go to learn all about the women who do big-wave surfing. We want to be that definitive place."

Big-wave surfer and documentary filmmaker Grant Washburn will help produce the content created by the women in the field. On top of dispersing it through a range of social platforms, Washburn and Sell hope that giving peeks at the women's lives outside the water will help increase appeal.

"It has to be more than just a girl on a giant wave, as cool as that is," he said. "Explain to us why you're doing this. What does your mom think? What's it like when you're the only woman in the water with a bunch of men? Then when she does go out and get that big wave, we're more invested in it and the actual surfing becomes way more compelling."

Bianca Valenti is among the 14-woman WickrX Super Sessions field. She surfs at San Francisco's Ocean Beach and Mavericks, but is also a beer and wine buyer for her family's restaurant to make a living. She believes she and her peers are paving the way for future female big-wave surfers, much the same way snowboarders of both genders 25 years ago laid the foundation for it to become a relatively major sport today.

"Big waves and the people who surf them really inspire me," she said. "So I'm inspired to share what I do in my life, see what these other women do in theirs, and then all come together in one place at Mavericks."

Sports Fails

1. Golf Cart Fail

This runaway vehicle wreaked minor on-field havoc following a high school football championship in Texas last December. But a heroic bystander hopped aboard and put on the brakes.

No casualties occurred, and the clip immediately became Internet legend.

2. Penalty Kick Fail

Watch out for the ricochet, goalie! This kid gets it in the right in the chops.

3. Mascot on Rollerblades Fail

What happens when you put an inflatable dinosaur on rollerblades and ask it to skate down a flight of stairs? Amazingness, that's what.

4. Flopping Fail

In sports, to "flop" is to exaggerate the force of contact in hopes of drawing a favorable call from officials. But you've got to time it much, much better than this guy does.

5. Hockey Celebration Fail

Apparently, if you hug a member of the opposite team after scoring a goal in hockey, you will get punched in the face.

6. Innocent Bystander Fail

This kid is just in the wrong place at the wrong time...to the benefit of the rest of us.

7. Representing Your School Fail

College football mascots are supposed to represent their schools in a fun, positive light — which doesn't typically include picking fights. Here, the University of Oregon's duck slams the University of Houston's cougar.

Bonus points for the sick elbow drop, though.

8. Weightlifting Fail

Not saying we could successfully lift 432 pounds above our heads, but dang, that looks painful.

German weightlifter Matthias Steiner dropped this massive barbell on his neck during the London Olympics this summer, but escaped serious injury.

9. Trampoline Dunk Fail

Sometimes, when you fail, you actually win.

10. Hurdling Fail

Why jump over hurdles when you could just RUN STRAIGHT THROUGH THEM?

File under: Never, Ever Gets Old.

11. Paying Attention Fail

After what could best be described as an "optimistic" shot attempt in a game last season, NBA center JaVale McGee showed some nice hustle getting back on defense. Only problem? His team still had the ball.

12. Judgment Fail

But that wasn't McGee's only legendary moment. Here, he shows why it's not a good idea to try dunking from the free throw line mid-game.

13. Olympic Promo Fail

For some reason, London's Olympic promotions this summer involved hanging Mayor Boris Johnson on a zipline while waving a pair of tiny flags.

Then he got stuck halfway through and it was pretty much the best, funniest, awkwardest thing that could have happened.

14. Grand Slam Celebration Fail

Major Leaguer Kendry Morales broke his lower left leg while celebrating a game-winning grand slam in 2010. This edited video provides the before, during and after rundown.

15. Slam Dunk Fail

See? White guys can jump? It's just the landing that's the hard part.

16. High Dive Fail

The announcer here sums it up perfectly. She calls this attempt from the 1992 Olympics "an absolute failed dive."

17. Piggyback Ride Fail

What begins as an innocent enough piggyback ride atop a fuzzy mascot turns into a pretty epic collision — and YouTube gold.

18. Long Jump Fail

Dude! If you're gonna pump up the crowd like that, you can't just faceplant into the sand.

19. Touchdown Celebration Fail

When you think about it, is there any better way to celebrate a touchdown than by pegging an unsuspecting spectator in the face? Bonus points for originality, at least.

20. Pro Golfer Fail

You'd think a professional golfer could put the ball in the hole with less than 16 strokes. Kevin Na — and the rest of the world — found out otherwise on this par-four hole at the 2011 Valero Texas Open.

21. Head-First Slide Fail

Well, that's one way of doing it...right?

22. Time Management Fail

Tie game, clock winding down — it's always better to get one last attempt up than just let the game go into overtime. A full court desperation heave with a 11 seconds to go is never the way to do it, however.

This classic gaffe by the University of Connecticut's Roscoe Smith came during a matchup of top teams in 2011.

23. Boogie Boarding Fail

Its veracity may be suspect, but this 2008 YouTube classic has more than 12.7 million views, despite a mind-numbing soundtrack.

24. Sportsmanship Fail

The summer of 2011 was a tough time for NBA star LeBron James. It was full of lingering ill-will for his decision to the leave the Cleveland Cavaliers and snarky schadenfreude over his initial failure to win a championship with the Miami Heat.

So it makes perfect sense that he'd let off some steam by viciously dunking on a tiny kid at summer camp, right? That's what happens at the 0:43 mark of this video.

25. Standing on a Basketball Hoop Fail

We're not quite sure why this mascot thought standing on top of a basketball rim was a good idea.

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